BREAKING: SCOTUS Rules on Camping in Public Spaces (Important for dealing with Homeless)

[PeteS in CA]

BREAKING: SCOTUS Rules on Camping in Public Spaces

https://pjmedia.com/chris-queen/2024/06/28/breaking-scotus-grants-pass-n4930126

In what sounds like one of the weirdest cases in recent memory, the Supreme Court has ruled 6-3 in favor of municipalities in the case of City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson. The case involved whether municipalities could bar homeless people from “camping” in public spaces, addressing the question, “Does the enforcement of generally applicable laws regulating camping on public property constitute ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ prohibited by the Eighth Amendment?”

The short summary from SCOTUSblog's Amy Howe in the site's live chat is that "The court holds that the enforcement of generally applicable laws regulating camping on public property does not constitute 'cruel and unusual punishment' barred by the Eighth Amendment."

This ruling restores to 9th Circuit cities flexibility in handling Sacred Homeless camping on sidewalk and in parks. It also removes from cities outside of the 9th Circuit the threat of the Boise case being applied to them.

[Fishrrman]

Lester and Earl comment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf6wMuo6AHM

Well I been layin' in a hardrock jail
I thought you knowed
I been layin' there ninety days
'Way down the road
Mean ol' judge said to me
It's ninety days for vagrancy
I've been havin' some hard travelin', lone

[Smokin Joe]

It has been long accepted here that the signs which say "no overnight camping" were fully enforceable. But we also have Winter to keep the riff-raff out.

[Kamaji]

Good decision.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

So 3 Justices actually thought that the homeless had a constitutional right to camp whereever the bleep they wanted to?

[Kamaji]

So 3 Justices actually thought that the homeless had a constitutional right to camp whereever the bleep they wanted to?

Because criminalizing public camping without taking into account whether someone is homeless is criminalizing "status" not conduct.  A totally stupid theory.  Does not surprise me that the liberals would all take that view.

If that theory were (a) valid, and (b) consistently applied, then laws against murder would be unconstitutional when applied to serial killers because it would be criminalizing their status as mentally ill psychopaths and not their conduct of killing repeatedly.

But neither (a) nor (b) is true.